Here comes Michelle!

Michelle Obama felt alone after a miscarriage 20 years ago, and she and Barack Obama underwent fertility treatment to conceive their two daughters, according to her upcoming memoir Becoming.

In some of her most extensive public comments on her White House years, the former first lady also lets her fury fly over US President Donald Trump's "bigotry and xenophobia" — dangerous, deliberate rhetoric, she writes, that risked her family's safety.

"For this," she writes, "I'd never forgive him."

But it's her deeply personal account of her marriage to Mr Obama that sheds new light on the Ivy League-educated couple's early struggle with issues of family, ambition and public life.

"We were trying to get pregnant and it wasn't going well," Ms Obama, 54, writes in her memoir Becoming.

"We had one pregnancy test come back positive, which caused us both to forget every worry and swoon with joy, but a couple of weeks later I had a miscarriage, which left me physically uncomfortable and cratered any optimism we felt."

The Obamas opted for IVF, one form of assisted reproduction that typically involves removing eggs from a woman, fertilising them with sperm in a lab, and implanting the resulting embryo. It costs thousands of dollars for every "cycle" and many couples require more than one attempt.

Ms Obama writes of being alone to give herself injections to help hasten the process. Her "sweet, attentive husband" was at the state legislature, "leaving me largely on my own to manipulate my reproductive system into peak efficiency," she said.

Memoir lets loose at Trump

Confronting racism in public life — being the first black first lady, wife of the nation's first black president — was a bracing experience, in Ms Obama's telling. She agonised over what she feared was a cartoonish, racist image. She remembered being labelled "angry" and, by the Fox network, "Obama's Baby Mama".

In the White House, she knew she would be labelled "other" and would have to earn the aura of "grace" given freely to her white predecessors. She found confidence in repeating to herself a favourite chant: "Am I good enough? Yes I am."

In the memoir, Ms Obama lets loose a blast of anger at Mr Trump.

She writes that Mr Trump's questioning of whether her husband was an American citizen was "crazy and mean-spirited" — and "dangerous". Mr Trump suggested Mr Obama was not born in the US but on foreign soil — his father was Kenyan. The former president was born in Hawaii.

"What if someone with an unstable mind loaded a gun and drove to Washington? What if that person went looking for our girls?" she writes in the memoir.

"Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family's safety at risk. And for this, I'd never forgive him."

As he left for Paris on Friday, Mr Trump chose not to respond to the former first lady, telling reporters, "Oh, I guess she wrote a book. She got paid a lot of money to write a book and they always insisted you come up with [controversy]."

Mr Trump instead changed the subject to his predecessor Mr Obama, saying "I'll give you a little controversy back. I'll never forgive [Mr Obama] for what he did to our US military. It was depleted and I had to fix it".

"What he did to our military made this country very unsafe for you and you and you," Mr Trump said.

Ms Obama also expresses disbelief over how so many women would choose a "misogynist" over Hillary Clinton in 2016. She remembers how her body "buzzed with fury" after seeing the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape, in which Mr Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women

She also accuses Mr Trump of using body language to "stalk" Ms Clinton during an election debate. She writes of Mr Trump following Ms Clinton around the stage, standing nearby and "trying to diminish her presence".

Pain of miscarriage and falling in love

Becoming is one of the most anticipated political books in memory, ranking at the top of Amazon's best-sellers on Friday.

Until now Ms Obama has not extensively shared details of her personal life, such as losing a baby.

"I felt like I failed because I didn't know how common miscarriages were because we don't talk about them," the former first lady said in an interview broadcast on US network ABC's Good Morning America.

''We sit in our own pain, thinking that somehow we're broken."

Ms Obama also writes about falling in love. The Obamas met at the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin LLP, and Michelle was sceptical at first. But she was then impressed by his "rich, even sexy baritone" and by his "strange, stirring combination" of serenity and power.

Their first kiss set off a "toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder," she wrote.

Ms Obama will launch her promotional tour for the book at in front of tens of thousands of people at Chicago's United Centre — the home arena of the NBA's Chicago Bulls — next week at an event moderated by Oprah Winfrey.

John Kelly, get out your typewriter!

United States President Donald Trump's chief of staff John Kelly will leave his job by year's end amid an expected West Wing reshuffle reflecting a focus on the 2020 re-election campaign and the challenge of governing with Democrats reclaiming control of the House.

Nick Ayers, Vice-President Mike Pence's chief of staff, is Mr Trump's top choice to replace Mr Kelly, and the two have held discussions for months about the job, a White House official said.

An announcement was expected in the coming days, the President said as he left the White House for the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia.

Mr Kelly had been credited with imposing order on a chaotic West Wing after his arrival in June 2017 from his post as homeland security secretary.

But his iron first also alienated some longtime allies of the US President, and he grew increasingly isolated, with an increasingly diminished role.

Known through the West Wing as "the chief" or "the general," the retired Marine Corps four-star general was tapped by Mr Trump via tweet in July 2017 from his perch atop the Homeland Security Department to try to normalise a White House riven by infighting and competing power bases.

"John Kelly will be leaving — I don't know if I can say retiring — but he's a great guy," Mr Trump said.

"John Kelly will be leaving at the end of the year. We'll be announcing who will be taking John's place — it might be on an interim basis.

"I'll be announcing that over the next day or two, but John will be leaving at the end of the year … I appreciate his service very much."

Mr Kelly had early successes, including ending an open-door Oval Office policy that had been compared to New York's Grand Central Station and instituting a more rigorous policy process to try to prevent staffers from going directly to Mr Trump.

But those efforts also miffed the President and some of his most influential outside allies, who had grown accustomed to unimpeded access.

Mr Kelly's handling of domestic violence accusations against the former White House staff secretary also caused consternation, especially among lower-level White House staffers, who believed Mr Kelly had lied to them about when he found out about the allegations.

Mr Trump and Mr Ayers were working out terms under which Mr Ayers would fill the role and the time commitment he would make, the White House official said.

Mr Trump wants his next chief of staff to agree to hold the job through the 2020 election.

Mr Ayers, who has young triplets, had long planned to leave the administration at the end of the year, but he has agreed to serve in an interim basis through the spring of 2019.

Word of Mr Kelly's impending departure comes a day after Mr Trump named his picks for attorney-general William Barr and ambassador to the United Nations Heather Nauert, and two senior aides shifted from the White House to Mr Trump's campaign.

Jenifer (Zarknorph) said:

Donald Trump's lawyers continue the US President's impeachment defence, but a report from the New York Times renews calls for fresh witnesses in the Senate trial.

This may be the moment that Trump is doomed.

But if some Republicans don't break ranks now, then the US has really set sail for a very dark place.

BerrySteph said:

But if some Republicans don't break ranks now, then the US has really set sail for a very dark place.

It set sail in November 2016.

Now it's just careening over a cliff.

Jenifer (Zarknorph) said:

Now it's just careening over a cliff.

The US might draw back from the abyss.

the Guardian

John Bolton's bombshell Trump book: eight of its most stunning claims

White House tried to block publication of The Room Where It Happened, but the book has been leaked to media outlets

Read more from the Guardian

1. Trump pleaded with China to help win the 2020 election

According to the excerpt of Bolton’s book published by the Wall Street Journal, Trump asked China to use its economic power to help him win a second election.

In one instance, Trump and President Xi Jinping were discussing hostility to China in the US. “Trump then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton writes.

“He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words, but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”

2. Trump suggested he was open to serving more than two terms

In another eye-opening exchange published in the Wall Street Journal, Trump also seems to support Xi’s idea of eliminating presidential term limits. “Xi said he wanted to work with Trump for six more years, and Trump replied that people were saying that the two-term constitutional limit on presidents should be repealed for him,” Bolton writes. “Xi said the US had too many elections, because he didn’t want to switch away from Trump, who nodded approvingly.”

Continued...

3. Trump offered favors to dictators

Bolton’s book reportedly details cases where Trump tried to kill criminal investigations as favors to dictators. One incident published in the Washington Post includes a 2018 discussion with the Turkish president, Recep Erdogan. Bolton says Erdogan gave Trump a memo claiming that a Turkish firm under investigation in the US was innocent. “Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things, explaining that the southern district prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people.”

4. Trump praised Xi for China’s internment camps

According to Bolton, Trump was also approving when Xi defended China’s internment of Uighur Muslims in detention camps. “According to our interpreter,” Bolton writes, “Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.”

According to leaked Communist party documents published in November, at least 1 million Uighur Muslims are detained in the camps.

5. Trump defended Saudi Arabia to distract from a story about Ivanka

Trump made headlines in November 2018 when he released a bizarre statement defending the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. It included lines such as “The world is a very dangerous place!” and “maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”

According to Bolton’s book, making headlines was the point. A story about his daughter Ivanka using her personal email for government business was also in the news at the time. After waging war on Hilary Clinton during the 2016 campaign for doing the same thing, Trump need a distraction.

“This will divert from Ivanka,” Trump reportedly said. “If I read the statement in person, that will take over the Ivanka thing.”

Continued